Examples of Content Reuse

Real-world use cases demonstrating DITA content reuse strategies across different scenarios and industries.

Enterprise Software Documentation Example

Scenario: A software company has three product editions sharing 70% common functionality.

Reuse Strategy: Create a shared content library for common procedures (e.g., user account creation steps). Use conref to include these steps in product-specific task topics. Use product attributes within the shared content and in publication configurations to filter for each edition (Basic, Professional, Enterprise).

Business Outcome: A single content source generates three distinct user guides with appropriate feature coverage for each product tier, reducing duplication and maintenance.

Multi-Platform Installation Guide Example

Challenge: Support installation across Windows, macOS, and Linux with shared prerequisites and post-installation steps.

Reuse Implementation: Create platform-neutral content (e.g., system requirements, backup warnings) using conref. Use platform attributes within <choice> elements in task steps to provide platform-specific instructions.

Publishing Result: Platform-specific installation guides that share common content while providing appropriate platform instructions, eliminating the need for entirely separate documents.

Regulatory Compliance Example

Scenario: Healthcare software requiring HIPAA compliance information across multiple user guides.

Compliance Reuse Strategy: Create a dedicated compliance content library. Use conref to embed HIPAA warnings or notes in relevant task or concept topics, often combined with otherprops for compliance-specific filtering (e.g., otherprops="healthcare" or otherprops="hipaa").

Compliance Benefit: Ensures consistent regulatory information across all documentation with single-point updates when regulations change, reducing legal risk.

Translation Efficiency Example

Challenge: A global software company needs to translate documentation into 12 languages with significant content overlap.

Translation-Optimized Reuse: Identify highly reusable content (error messages, navigation instructions, safety warnings, common procedural steps). Use conref for these elements. DITA also provides the translate="no" attribute to explicitly exclude specific content (e.g., brand names, code snippets, non-translatable strings) from translation, further optimizing costs.

Translation ROI: DITA's modularity and reuse lead to significant cost reductions (up to 40%) through leveraged translation memory and elimination of duplicate translation work.